Mike DePaulo's IT Blog

Monday, March 8, 2010

Maybe this is a mistake, or maybe this was intended for the Chinese market, but I find it funny that an American nettop by Asus is being sold with Red Flag Linux (the Chinese government's official Linux distro.)

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Hey HP, a 5.3 lb (2.4 kg) 14.1" laptop is hardly what I call an "Ultra-Portable."

To be fair, it does look like a pretty good laptop. It has good user reviews on their site and it always comes with 802.11n wi-fi, hdmi/vga output, and a USB/eSATA port. Still, get your labels right HP.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

-The highly technical Xsane image scanner has been replaced with "Simple Scan," developed by Canonical. I say this is definitely a good idea.

-There are now only 6 games included by default. I read one user story where a grandma was amazed to see all the awesome Gnome games included by default.

-You can update the installer (during the installer wizard.) If this can increase the changes that ubuntu will install, it sounds awesome.

-No more installer option to participate in the package popularity survey. You can enable it under the synaptic options.

-Virtualbox guest editions, both Lucid's 3.1.2 OSE ones and the official 3.1.4 proprietary ones, cause the mouse cursor to not be shown.

-Browsing my (always difficult to browse) network is either not working or extremely slow.

-The new Palimpsest Disk Utility 2.29 version seems nice, but it doesn't work with an 800x600 screen.

-I'll have to try out the included pitivi video editor. I like the idea of including a simple video editor by default. I wish I didn't have to install the whole windows live package to install windows movie maker on Windows 7.

-Although tsclient is still the default RDP front-end/client, I am glad that Remmina is in the repos. It is a great gnome RDP (and other remote desktop implementations) client. However, it should not default to 256 colors (8-bit color.)

I'm preparing a list of Ubuntu Packages that I recommend. These are the specific package names, but they should generally translate to the names in add/remove or in the software center.I have them listed by category too.http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcznzv55_19g2t9k5xb

Price: $500 to $550Availability: JuneThe highlight of these models is the Nvidia Ion graphics processor. It does not use up much more power, yet it enables 1080P video playback (when run properly) and far better 3d game performance. Games will be far more likely to not run because of the CPU rather (roughly a 2.0 ghz pentium-4 equivalent) than the GPU (graphics). Intel Atom CPU, prefer the Atom N280. 1 GB of RAM or 2. 10" to 12" size. 160GB HD, or larger if not using XP (getting XP at all and for cheap means max 160GB.) Likely a 6-cell battery. Likely to have upgraded 802.11n wi-fi.How to find: follow http://www.ionbased.com and http://netbookupdates.com/

These are models based around ARM Processors/Systems-On-A-Chip. This ARM architecture enables them to be very low-power, thin, light, and even fanless. However, ARM can only run Linux (and android before too long) and not Windows. They will have a less powerful CPU and probably less RAM, but make up for it by being able to decode 720P video. Expect 7" to 10" screen sizes and flash memory.